1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Let’s do a B2B case study.

Mohanjit Jolly: Let’s do a B2B case. About a third of our portfolio consists of US Delaware companies that are building products from India. Chennai seems to be the hub for most of our enterprise companies.

Sramana Mitra: Zoho and FreshWorks.

Mohanjit Jolly: Exactly. That fraternity has expanded. We have a company that just announced a $260 million raise—a company called Uniphore. It’s a very interesting story of grit, persistence, and how entrepreneurs need to adapt to market conditions and challenges that come their way.

This company started in an incubator associated with IIT Madras back in 2007–2008. It’s an 18-year success story. One thing I want to tell entrepreneurs is this: in today’s “TikTok mindset” and 24-hour news cycles, we tend to celebrate massive ramp-ups—those exponential growth stories. Everyone has seen the curve showing how many years it took to reach 100 million users in various categories, from TV to the internet to the recent GPT phenomenon.

But we often don’t celebrate companies that have been around for a while and have gone through ups and downs. Even with this announcement, I received messages saying, “This is great—Uniphore has been crushing it.” The reality is that even Uniphore has gone through peaks and valleys.

The company started as a conversational AI company before AI was mainstream, in India. It worked with banks and telcos that leveraged AI in multiple languages to answer customer queries—things like balance checks or payment instructions. Much of this was automated, and then they realized AI could also enhance interactions with a human in the loop.

India provided the data—the interactions—that fueled the AI engine they were building. Think about the volume of conversations happening at SBI, HDFC, or Airtel. All of that became data feeding into this AI system, which analyzed emotion, sentiment, and resolution speed. They unknowingly leveraged India’s scale before flipping to a US-incorporated entity and moving to Palo Alto, which is when we invested in them around 2019.

It’s been remarkable to see them first conquer the conversational AI market. Then came the GPT moment. Suddenly, the board saw the entire conversational AI industry getting commoditized. There was an “oh no” moment—should they sell or transform?

To Umesh, Ravi, and the board’s credit, they transformed into what they now call a “business AI company.” They’re now competing head-on with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, offering enterprise clients—Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies—end-to-end AI transformation solutions.

They help businesses go all-in on AI. Clients can bring their own models or use Uniphore’s. They can bring their own data, and Uniphore helps integrate it, breaking down silos. They provide the technology to create orchestration layers for AI agents—clients can bring their own or use Uniphore’s. The entire stack is composable.

Here’s a company—an upstart from Chennai—that’s now truly global. It’s a multi-unicorn and a perfect example of what Iron Pillar set out to do: highlight Indian technological prowess on the global stage. A large part of their team is still in Chennai and now in Bangalore, but it’s truly a global company.

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One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) is the first global virtual accelerator in the world, founded in 2010 by Silicon Valley serial Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra. It offers a fully online entrepreneurship incubation, acceleration and education resource for solo entrepreneurs and bootstrapped founders working on tech and tech-enabled services ventures. 1Mby1M does not charge equity, offers an AI Mentor in 57 languages, and offers a distinct advantage over other accelerators including Y Combinator.

The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar
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